The Chicken Dance Read online

  Mrs. Leonard fell on the sofa and grabbed her stomach and said, “Whew! That wore me out.”

  Leon and Mr. Leonard sat down next to her and then she said, “You know, the bride told me a funny story about that song. She told me that it was written by this Swiss accordion player back in the fifties. Well, one day this German band played it at some Oktoberfest here in the States and since it was called the Duck Dance, they wanted someone to dance around in a duck costume. Nobody had a duck costume, though, but they did have a chicken costume and so they used that. Well, since everybody saw a chicken dancing around to this song, they started calling it the Chicken Dance.”

  Twelve

  The next few weeks my mother didn’t really talk about Dawn, or Chinese food, or missing Shreveport anymore and instead talked about people in Horse Island and what they were doing. She started acting different too. She sang out loud and spent less time at the house, and one night she started baking pies.

  I think it was a Wednesday because of the shows that were playing on TV. My father and I had finished eating our salty food and right before we were about to start eating our dessert, my mother jumped out of her seat and said, “Freeze. I have a surprise for you. Don’t move a muscle and whatever you do, don’t start eating your dessert. I’ll be right back.”

  She walked to the kitchen real fast and then came back a few minutes later carrying three slices of apple pie.

  “Surprise,” she said, and then gave my father and me each one.

  My father and I both looked at the pie and then looked back at her.

  “Well, what do you think?” she asked.

  “But there’s already a dessert in the TV platter,” my father told her.

  “I know,” she said. “But I thought it might be nice to have a little change.”

  My father pushed on the pie with his fork like he thought it would move or something, and then said, “Well, if you ask me, it’s a waste of the good dessert that’s in the TV platter.”

  My mother picked up some of the pie with her fork and said, “Oh, Dick, you’re so boring. You need to live a little.”

  My father didn’t say anything. He only ate his pie and stared at the television, and about every third bite he took of the apple pie, he’d scoop up some of the peach cobbler from his TV dinner and look at my mother like a dog did whenever someone kicked it. She didn’t notice him because she was too busy staring down at her pie, smiling. When she finally stopped looking at it, she looked at my father and said, “I think I’ll make a cherry one for the dinner party this weekend.”

  My father was about to take a bite of his pie, but stopped and asked, “What?”

  “I invited some people over for dinner this weekend,” my mother told him. “Sort of a little Christmas party.”

  My father put his fork down and asked, “Christmas party? Why? I thought you hated all the people who live here.”

  My mother looked at her pie again and said, “I do. Well, I did. But I decided that they’re really not bad people and have some very interesting lives. Did you know that Sandy Simon used to live in California? That’s right by Nevada. I almost lived in Vegas, you know.”

  “Yes, Janice,” my father said. “We know you almost lived there. Who’s coming to dinner?”

  My mother ate her last bite of pie and said, “I assure you, it’s only going to be people in this town that matter,” and then she stood up and said, “That was delicious. I’m going to go get another piece.”

  That Saturday my mother made my father go buy a Christmas tree. We usually had a fake one because my mother said the real ones gave her allergies. But that year we got a great big real one! And my mother let me help her decorate it. It was really pretty when we finished it. It had red balls and white lights and a silver garland.

  When we were finished with the tree, my mother and I cleaned the whole house. She cleaned the tops of light fixtures, which I’d never seen her do before, and made me vacuum underneath the sofa, which she’d never made me do before, and for the first time ever, my mother cleaned the room that she called the dining room but my father called the big closet.

  In the room, there was a table and a bunch of boxes of stuff like old clothes, books, and folders of paper. Sometimes one of them went in there if they were looking for the warranty for the refrigerator or stove, but we never ate in that room, and until the night of the dinner party, I didn’t know that we could eat in that room. I also didn’t know that there was a box in there with a bunch of secrets about Dawn and me.

  I found it when I was helping my mother clean out the room by carrying boxes to a closet in our foyer. When I was picking up the last box, the bottom broke and everything inside fell out. It was mostly papers and bubble wrap, but there was also a metal box that I’d never seen before.

  The box was about the size of a cigar box and there was a number dial attached to it like the padlock I used for my bicycle. Whoever had opened the box last hadn’t spun the dial to relock it, and so when I pushed on the lid, it popped open. Inside were bills from a company called Munson Detective Agency, but the thing that really caught my eye was a birth certificate with the name Stanley Ronald Schmidt and my birth date, April 19, 1969. Before I could see anything else, my mother grabbed it out of my hands and screamed at me, “What are you doing! This is none of your business! I can’t believe you opened that box! Get out of my sight!”

  I ran to my room and then heard my father walk into the dining room and ask my mother what was wrong. I was really scared and so I sat on my bed and stared out the window at my chickens to try and calm down. I started wondering who Stanley Ronald Schmidt was and why he had the same birthday as me, but before I could think about it too much, my father walked into my room.

  “Listen, Don,” he said. “You shouldn’t stick your nose in your mother’s and my things. Now tell me what you saw.”

  I lied and told him, “I only saw the birth certificate.”

  His face got red and he didn’t say anything, so I asked, “Who is Stanley Ronald Schmidt, and why does he have the same birthday as me?”

  My father’s eyes opened wider and he said, “Stanley Ronald Schmidt? You want to know who he is?”

  I nodded my head up and down and said, “Yes, sir. He has the same birthday as me. Is he my cousin?”

  My father scratched his leg and then folded his arms and said, “No. You’re Stanley Ronald Schmidt.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  My father dropped his arms by his side and said, “When you were born, we named you Stanley Ronald. Because … that was the name of my uncle.”

  He stopped there and so I asked, “Why did you tell me my name was Don Fred?”

  My father rubbed his feet on the floor like he was a chicken scratching the dirt or dancing, and then he said, “Well, because your uncle—I mean, my uncle Stanley—drank and gambled a lot and owed some people a large amount of money and had to leave the country, and your mother and I didn’t want you to have the same name as a man like that, so we changed it.”

  I thought about this for a second, and then asked, “Why Don Fred? Was that the name of another one of your uncles?”

  My father tapped his foot and said, “No. We just liked the name Don because it kind of reminded us of Dawn. And we didn’t want you to be called Donald Ronald and your mother really liked that famous dancer Fred Astaire, so we came up with Don Fred.”

  My father had never spoken to me as much as he did in those five minutes. He also had never sweated as much. Not only was his face covered in sweat, but his shirt was too. And he couldn’t stop scratching himself, either. It was like he was standing on an ant pile.

  Anyway, then he told me, “Listen, Don, I don’t want to talk about this anymore. We changed your name and now it’s Don, and from now on don’t look at anything that isn’t for you. Now wait in here until your mother comes and then I want you to tell her you’re sorry for violating her privacy.”

  I thought it was kind of strange th
at my parents had changed my name but didn’t bother to change it on my birth certificate. I wondered if a lot of parents did that and if there were a bunch of other kids with names different from the ones on their birth certificates. Maybe Vickie Viceroy’s name was really Vera or Leon’s name was really Larry. I didn’t like that my parents could change my name anytime they wanted to because I was worried that they might decide that they didn’t like Don anymore and change it. I liked the name Don because before I had won the chicken-judging contest, all the kids had called me “new kid,” and so I’d only been Don for a few months. I decided that I wouldn’t tell any of the kids my new name if my parents changed it and then I started wondering what the Munson Detective Agency had to do with changing my name.

  That didn’t make sense because people always hired detectives on television to find someone or to take pictures of someone’s husband in bed with another woman. I didn’t know who my parents could be looking for and I wondered how I could find out without asking them. Then I thought that maybe they were lying to me and that I wasn’t Stanley Ronald Schmidt and that he was a real person and they were looking for him, but if he was born on the same day as me, he would be my twin brother.

  When I thought of this, my heart fell like it did when my mother or father had driven really fast over a hill. The more I thought about it, the more the feeling increased. I felt like I had won my blue ribbon all over again, but it wasn’t a blue ribbon that I’d won this time. It was a brother. I thought about how he could sit next to me on the sofa and watch television, and help me raise my chickens, and I could introduce him to people and say, “This is my brother. We’re best friends.”

  I imagined how we’d have to share my bedroom and how we could stare out of the window together and talk to the chickens. And late at night we’d have pillow fights, or just lay awake and talk about any and everything that we wanted.

  Then I started to wonder where he was. I got a little sad when I thought that maybe he had died. I hadn’t even met him, and now he was gone. Since I didn’t want to think about him being dead, I made up a story that would make him alive.

  My parents had taken my brother and me on a picnic in a park in Shreveport when we were babies. My mother was playing patty-cake with us while my father played a guitar. He remembered that he had a surprise for us and went off to the car to get it. A stray Frisbee flew near my mother and she stopped playing with Stanley and me and picked up the Frisbee and threw it back to its owner. She only had her head turned from us for a minute when the kidnapper grabbed Stanley. My parents looked everywhere for my twin brother, and finally they hired a private detective, Mr. Munson, to find him. My parents kept it a secret from me because they didn’t want to upset me.

  The story made me happy, and I felt like I was riding fast over a hill again. It explained the birth certificate and Mr. Munson and gave me a twin brother who could walk up to me at any minute.

  Any minute, I thought, and then I heard footsteps and I smelled an odor that was kind of like flowers sprayed with glass cleaner. My mother came in my room in a bright red dress that I’d never seen before and had on more makeup than usual.

  “You owe me an apology,” she said.

  I told her, “I’m sorry.”

  And she said, “Well, you should be. You have no right to go through my things,” and then she breathed real hard and said, “When will my family respect me?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  She scrunched her forehead up and said, “Don, that’s a matorical question. You’re not supposed to answer it.”

  I knew she meant to say “rhetorical,” because Mrs. Forest had used it two days earlier when she said, “Leon, when I ask you if you’re trying to drive me insane, I don’t want you to answer me back. That is what’s called a rhetorical question. Say it with me class. ‘A rhetorical question.’”

  I didn’t correct my mother, though. Instead I looked down at the floor until my mother started spinning around in circles as if someone were turning her on the dance floor.

  “How do I look?” she asked.

  “Very nice,” I said.

  “Very nice?” she asked. “Is that all you can say? I mean, how many women in this town can pull off a dress like this?”

  Before I could answer, she walked out of the room and then shouted, “I think I need more perfume!”

  She came back three seconds later and handed me a box and some clothes on a hanger. There was a green shirt and some dark blue pants and a clip-on red tie with green dots. When she handed them to me, she said, “I’m tempted not to give these to you because you invaded my privacy this afternoon. You’re lucky I’m a nice person. Besides, I want you to look nice in front of the guests and I don’t think I should have to suffer because of your rudeness.”

  She walked out of my room and then shouted, “Now, Don, I want you to take a bath and get dressed and then come in the kitchen and help me cook! Oh, and wear the black shoes and belt that are in the box!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, and then whispered, “Stanley and I will be there in a minute.”

  I knew that Stanley wasn’t really there with me, but I pretended that he was because I liked it. I could make him listen to whatever I had to say and I could have him answer me back with whatever answer I wanted to hear. Since he was my twin, I imagined speaking to someone who looked just like me. Only he didn’t wear glasses and he didn’t have freckles covering his body and he was a little taller. His voice was deeper than mine and when he wasn’t smiling, his face looked relaxed like he wasn’t afraid of anything.

  While Stanley and I took our baths, I told him all about what had been going on since he’d been kidnapped. I told him all about the chicken-judging contest and how I’d chased the stray dog and pig.

  “Can I be friends with you and Leon and chase the stray dog and pig?” he asked me.

  I told him, “Yeah, sure,” and that we’d ride our bikes to school together too, because we were brothers and best friends and we would always be together, except that I had to leave him for a few hours to help our mother, but that I’d be back soon. He told me, “Thanks,” and then smiled at me and rubbed my head.

  After I got dressed, I went to the kitchen to help my mother. She was cutting up some lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, but she stopped and looked at me and said, “Nice, real nice. You’re lucky I have such good taste in clothes.”

  I smiled at her and then she pointed at a bunch of Salisbury Steak TV dinners on the kitchen table and said, “Now put three of those dinners in the oven.”

  My mother was wearing a long white apron that my father had given to her for Christmas one year and it had big fold marks on it because she had never worn it before because she didn’t wear aprons. I thought it looked kind of funny and I was glad I didn’t have to wear one but then she picked up another apron that my father had given to her for her birthday once and told me to put it on.

  For the next couple of hours, my mother and I heated the TV dinners three at a time. We took them out ten minutes before they were finished and then separated the dinners by what food they were. What I mean is that we put all the steaks in a metal container, all the mashed potatoes into another, and all the cherry pies in the trash can. My mother said they would be too messy to serve, and we’d instead have a frozen apple pie that she’d heat up during dinner.

  When we were finished, my mother smiled at the containers and said, “When the guests get here I’m going to put these containers in the oven for the final ten minutes. That way they’ll be nice and warm and they won’t be overcooked. Pretty smart idea, isn’t it?” and then she sat down at the kitchen table and said, “Cooking wears me out. Now you understand what I have to go through every day to feed you and your father.”

  I told her, “Thank you,” and she asked, “What time is it?”

  She looked up at the clock and said, “Oh my god! It’s six o’clock. The Power Couples will be here any minute.”

  The Power Couples were
Mr. and Mrs. Bufford, Mr. and Mrs. Simon, and the Leonards. My mother called them that because she said they were the most powerful people in town and that they could buy and sell anyone they wanted to. Mr. and Mrs. Simon owned Horse Island Shoes and Toys, and my mother said that they controlled what shoes people wore and what toys kids played with, and if that wasn’t power, she didn’t know what was.

  Right after my mother said “The Power Couples will be here any minute,” someone knocked on the door, and she let out a little yell, and then said, “Ah, they’re here.”

  She jumped up from her chair and ran from the kitchen through the foyer and into the living room and said, “Dick, turn off that television and go and greet the guests.”

  Then she came back into the kitchen and told me, “Don, help him.”

  I took off my apron and walked to the front door, where my father was standing. He was wearing a pair of dark blue pants, a green shirt, and red tie just like me. He looked down at me and then at his shirt and tie and then down at me again. He stared at me for like five or six seconds, and then my mother yelled, “Answer the door, Dick!”

  My father took a deep breath, let it out real slow, and then opened the door. All three of the Power Couples and Leon were standing on our porch. Leon was wearing a dark blue suit and a white shirt and a red tie with white chickens holding little American flags. His hair was slicked back, and I almost didn’t recognize him until he stuck his tongue out and smiled. I smiled back, and then Mr. Bufford took off his black cowboy hat and said, “Hello, Schmidts. Merry Christmas.”

  “Please come in,” my father said.